News You Can Use

Super Arcade Finally Gets The Thumbs Up To Build In Azusa – The case of Super Arcade has been a long, hard fought battle but finally the City of Azusa is letting them move forward on building. We look forward to seeing the new Super Arcade in action!

Are they really allowing construction to begin? Hell yeah they are! To all our friends and fans, see you all real soon! pic.twitter.com/GREJRheZrJ

Pac-Man Smash Slim Line @ GTI 2016 – We heard about this revision of Bandai Namco’s Pac-Man Smash air hockey table at the AAMA Gala and already the game has been found overseas. Here’s a quick video of it in action:

The skilled casinos are coming! The Skilled casinos are coming! – While most of the gaming world is hyped up on VR technology, on the gambling side of things, they are starting to see the first batch of skill-based casino games make their way to gaming floors. I’m not sure how I feel about this given the stigma that arcades still carry in some places as lines blur but regardless, it is happening. One company at the forefront of skill-based gaming is GameCo; I’ve also heard that certain arcade developers have been looking into the possibilities of what they can do here:

InJoy Motion Teams Up With Futuretown For New VR Tech – At the Tokyo Game Show 2016 a few weeks ago, Taiwanese arcade maker InJoy Motion finally unveiled their new VR project. I heard about this about a year ago but they mentioned it would be focusing on the home. I also was going to do a more complete post on it but am awaiting more info so we’ll wait for that to arrive. In the mean time, InJoy will be at IAAPA 2016 with the tech so we will see if they have an amusement application going for it too. Even Oculus Rift founder Lucky Palmer got in on the action for this at TGS:

John Popadiuk Returns With Houdini Pinball – He is known for designing some of the more beloved pinball machines in the 90s (Theatre of Magic, Cirqus Voltaire, Tales of the Arabian Nights) but in recent times, John Popadiuk has gone through a bumpy ride. Looking to move on from that, he has designed Houdini: Master Mystery, which is going to be built by a new company by the name of American Pinball. We’ll keep an eye on this but if you are interested in finding out more about this new machine, check out Pinballnews.com.

Election 2016 Pinball – Made for the Wall Street Journal. I’ve often wondered how a political themed pinball machine might do although it’s probably for the best to not have one in an arcade given how high emotions get on the subject:

Don’t tamper with other people’s arcade machines – Assuming that this story as told on Reddit is accurate, perhaps a new rule is going to be posted at D&B regarding use of their machines. I get that people are passionate about their games and D&B would have some fault for leaving the coin door open but that doesn’t give you permission to do anything with someone else’s arcade machine. If you want a game updated that badly, go through the right channels. Otherwise, there are a number of things that can go wrong and would make you liable for any damage and on top of that, even though arcade machines are there for people to play, that does not make them your property.

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Going through the right channels is kind of a joke when these people are so f… stupid that their mindset is: “As long as the coin acceptor works the game is fine.”
Case in point with pinball: I have read quite a few change notes for pinballs’ software over the years that contain stuff like “Changed timing for the coil x from the previous version so that the assembly won’t get damaged.”
Guess what kind of installed software you always see when you get a used pinball/play a non-working pinball on location with a certain assembly being damaged.

From my understanding of D&B, most of them do try and keep the games up-to-date. I could be wrong about that but that is what I have heard. It’s possible they would have updated the machine had the player bothered to get the manager in on it but instead he made efforts to hide the update and not let them know that someone left the machine open.

In my area, I know of a group of rhythm gamers who have built up a solid relationship with the venues that have the games they want to play. They are then able to get permission to make repairs and often the venue calls them to fix the machine if something goes wrong.

If a location is run by an incompetent staff that still doesn’t give anyone the right to update the machine. If they don’t care enough to do so, then that is what competition is for (in fact there is another PIU unit near where this D&B incident took place that is up-to-date). If anyone cares that much when the location doesn’t, then they should patronize other locations that do bother to update the game. Or startup their own if they are so inclined. By what I’ve seen, locations that don’t care to update/repair games tend to lose business and end up getting closed.

However a good majority of players never report issues to the staff. It would be great if they did as that helps keep a location running smoothly. A location with solid games also earns better so any business owner with sense wants players who interact with them to be there and work with them. But doing it in secret is how you ruin those chances.